Christian Counseling For Personal Development: Always Be Growing

Maybe you don’t feel stuck, but want to keep growing and don’t quite know how. Or perhaps there is a certain area of your life that you want to improve, such as conflict management, interrelation dynamics, or spiritual gifting. These are excellent reasons to pursue your own personal development.

Some common reasons people pursue personal development counseling are:

• Life coaching
• Discovering your personality type and unique gifting
• Self-esteem building
• Engaging more fully with others
• Spiritual growth

The goal of personal development counseling at San Diego Christian Counseling is for people to live each day experiencing a sense of peace, belonging, and purpose. When you pursue your own growth, you will be able to give more to others. So don’t let yourself burn out living unconcerned with your self, pursue your own development to create more space in your life for yourself and other people.

We recognize our need for personal fitness trainers or mentors in our chosen field, why would our personal development be any different? A key aspect of growth is having someone to speak into your life and give guidance, this is true for personal development, like any other area of our life.

Setting Goals is Important

Life without goals can feel purposeless and foster unhealthy patterns. An easy way to promote growth and healthy patterns is by setting goals. They keep you focused, encouraged, and motivated, especially when you see progress taking place. With that in mind, it’s also important to set goals in the right way, it’s important to evaluate our aspirations and establish attainable objectives. Goal setting is a key part of Christian development counseling, and it can be a fun and exciting process.

A Biblical and Psychological Foundation for Personal Development Counseling

When we feel stuck emotionally or unmotivated, we sometimes need someone to help evaluate what is going on and point us in the right direction. Whether you realize it or not, we all have needs, which if left unmet can leave us feeling empty and unsatisfied with life. This is a fundamental concept in psychology best displayed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The Lord’s Prayer, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and Christian Counseling

While it is tempting to think all we need to do is pray more or spend more time reading the Bible, sometimes taking more specific action related to our needs is important, and even Biblical. The Bible actually outlines something very similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the Lord’s Prayer.

In the prayer, Jesus outlines basic needs, our need for daily bread. This is the most basic of Maslow’s needs. If we don’t have the basic life necessities, then we can’t grow, let alone survive.

After this, Jesus prays for “deliverance from evil,” which corresponds to Maslow’s concept of safety and security, the next need we all have. While this might seem like a stretch, it’s not as much as you think. If evil means living in fear, abuse, and captivity, then living with security and safety is in a real sense the deliverance from evil.

The next need Maslow outlines is the need for love and belonging. Jesus then moves onto forgiveness in his prayer. Forgiveness is one of the ultimate ways to display love and belonging. What is more loving than acknowledging pain or wrongdoing, while being willing to forgive and be forgiven? It is a difficult process, but the key to relational satisfaction and mutuality.

Next, Maslow highlights our esteem needs. Loving yourself isn’t easy. We are flawed people and regularly hide from others and God because we don’t feel worthy. But, when we hid from God and his love for us, then we aren’t able to move forward in healthy confidence and identity. Sometimes we need someone to help remind us who we are and what God says about us. We matter because he cares for us. When we humbly acknowledge that, we can find peace and love for him, his creation, and ourselves.

Finally, the last need for Maslow is self-actualization. From a psychological perspective, it’s the personal need for growth and reaching our fullest potential. The goal of the Christian is to be living in greater and greater accord with God and his Spirit. With the help of the Spirit, we can live in deep connection to God, allowing us to experience greater degrees of faith, love, and service. This is very much in accord with Maslow’s final need for self-actualization.

However, it is very common for Christians to lose sight of their own spiritual growth and development. Sometimes we get so caught up in what we are doing, we lose sight of our own growth. At this point, self-actualization and reflection are put on the back burner. When this happens, it can be difficult to come to self-awareness and realize what has happened. San Diego Christian counseling would love to be the mirror for you to help see what is really going on in your busy life and schedule, helping you prioritize your values.